Tag: ecology

Williams Lake Tribune columnist Diana French wrote Jan 13, 2015: Out of sight is out of mind. Those of us living in the Interior might not know or care that sea creatures are sick, dying or disappearing at an alarming rate all along the Pacific coast. There are dying oysters, bleeding herring, melting star fish, hungry Orcas and sick seals. The latest are dead seabirds… Some blame ocean acidification for the devastation, others wonder if it’s radiation fallout from Fukushima. Whatever, it might be helpful to find the cause before all the creatures are gone.

University of California Santa Barbara, Jan 15, 2015: A consortium of scientists, including UC Santa Barbara’s Douglas McCauley, has found that the same patterns that led to the collapse of wildlife populations on land are now occurring in the sea… Their findings are published today in the journal Science… “All signs indicate that we may be initiating a marine industrial revolution,” [McCauley] said. “We are setting ourselves up in the oceans to replay the process of wildlife Armageddon that we engineered on land.”

New York Times, Jan 15, 2015: A team of scientists… has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them. “We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event,” said Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an author of the new research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

Science — ‘Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean’, Jan 16, 2014: Loss of species in marine environments… appears to be increasing rapidly. McCauley et al. review the recent patterns of species decline and loss in marine environments… they note many worrying declines… our effects on marine animals are increasing in pace and impact… today’s low rates of marine extinction may be the prelude to a major extinction pulse… habitat destruction is likely to become an increasingly dominant threat to ocean wildlife [and] is likely to intensify as a major driver of marine wildlife loss. Proactive intervention can avert a marine defaunation disaster of the magnitude observed on land.

From TV: Hawaii coral “the worst scientists have ever seen” — Professor: “It’s like a ghost town… We would not typically see entire colonies bleached, ever” — Gov’t map of ‘maximum bleaching alert area’ in Pacific mirrors Fukushima plume model since 2011. Official: Fissures in earth now suspected under dam upstream of nuke plants — “There’s plenty of rumors… We’re considering all possibilities… Leak is actually in embankment, that’s where all the focus is” — Speculation that problem to go on for years — New drone footage shows excavation in progress

“Sea creatures sick, dying or disappearing at alarming rate all along Pacific coast… Some wonder if it’s fallout from Fukushima” — New York Times: “Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction” — Study: “We may be on precipice of major extinction event” in marine wildlife